1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid container manufacturing method, a liquid container, and the like.
2. Related Art
In the related art, a technique is known of using an ink cartridge (alternatively referred to as simply a “cartridge”) as a technique for supplying ink to a printer, which is an exemplary liquid-jet apparatus. When a cartridge is manufactured, ink is injected into the internal portion of the cartridge. The cartridge is attached to a printer, and ink inside the cartridge flows through a supply opening to the printer. In the related art, when ink is consumed until little or no ink remains in a cartridge, the cartridge is replaced with a new cartridge. Alternatively, after a cartridge is used up, it may be recycled by again injecting ink into the cartridge. The related art cartridge may include a detection member (e.g., a piezoelectric element or a prism, also referred to as a first member) that can be used to detect the ink residual state (i.e., whether or not ink remains or how much ink remains). (Refer to, for example, JP-A-2010-5958.).
Incidentally, in order to increase the amount of ink in a cartridge, it is conceivable to increase the capacity of a container portion that contains ink in the cartridge. An exemplary method of increasing the capacity of the container portion is to increase the area of the container portion in directions that, with respect to the orientation in which the cartridge is used, intersect the vertical direction. This can avoid an increase in the size of the cartridge in the vertical direction. However, when the area of the container portion is increased in directions that intersect the vertical direction, the detection precision in detecting the ink residual amount tends to decrease. The reason for this is that, even though the residual amount of ink is the same, the height of the ink surface in a larger-volume cartridge will be lower than in a smaller-volume cartridge.
In order to address this problem, it is conceivable to partition off a small chamber having a volume smaller than that of the container portion, and to provide a detection member in the small chamber. With such a small chamber, even when little ink remains it easier to keep the liquid surface high in the small chamber. Thus, a decrease in the detection precision in detecting the ink residual amount can be avoided. As a method of injecting ink into the thus configured cartridge, a method in which ink is injected at a location other than the small chamber may be employed. However, when using the method in which ink is injected from a location other than the small chamber, it is difficult to distribute a sufficient amount of ink to the small chamber. As a result, there is a problem in that the detection precision in detecting the ink residual amount tends to drop. This sort of problem occurs not only in a cartridge that internally contains ink, but also in other liquid containers that contain liquid other than ink.